Rainbow Cats is a Finish!

The title would be more accurate if it said Rainbow Cats IV is finished, because this is the fourth quilt of momcats and kittens that I’ve done over the years. But who really cares, right? I’m just excited that this is finished for Xander, my granddaughter London’s cousin. And I’m ready to quilt the dinosaur quilt for his brother Brody, but I’ll talk about that momentarily.

Rainbow cats finished at 58” square and I quilted it in simple loops on my Bernina machine. The backing, which I don’t have a picture of, is just a cute wide-backed black and white cat print. I’m holding up the quilt while Bruce single-handedly snapped the picture. (He only has one arm so has been retired as quilt holder, LOL)

Rainbow Cats was stitched along with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) this year, each litter when its color turn came. I purposely made two yellow litters and omitted pink since it’s for a boy. I’m linking up to share at Scrappy Saturday.

I love the quilt picture, though (even if it’s a bit washed out by the sun), because you can see the beautiful blue sky and our nearby mountains. What you can’t see in the above picture, however, is the tree. So I snapped a picture of that in all it’s autumn glory a bit later in the day.

Last Sunday as I was starting to sew, my iron died. It was a 3-year-old Rowenta that was heavy, and I hated it. It didn’t die without first spitting out a lot of black gunk all over the fabric I was ironing. It did wash out, however. So I ran off to Target to get a new iron. It was a toss-up between Target and Home Depot. I wanted just a good old cheap Black and Decker iron, because those have always been reliable and durable for me. Target had three irons. And by that I don’t mean they had three types of irons, they had just three. Period. Two were Rowentas at $64.99 and $79.99. HA! I wouldn’t buy one at any price. So I got the only other one they had - a $29.99 Hamilton Beach. I’m not going to use water in my irons anymore (I’ll use spray bottles instead), so hopefully this will work OK. It’s actually very sturdy without being heavy, and so far I quilt like it. 

Now, in the background (the design board) of my iron picture, you’ll see an in-process photo of the dinosaur quilt for Brody that I mentioned above. The top is sewn and the backing is ready. I just need to baste and quilt (and bind) it. My plan is to do that on Sunday so that I can hand it over to DGD London’s other grandmother on Tuesday. 

I’ll chat more about it next week when it’s finished. By then I will also have finished up the quilting of my DGD Lauren’s quilt, which we’ll give her for her high school graduation. That’s the Framed Pinwheels quilt that I started last summer when we visited Missouri Star Quilt Company, and whose progress was so rudely interrupted by the basement sewing room flood.

Here’s a peek at the quilting Framed Pinwheels. Lauren plans to major in ecological engineering with a minor in PSC (Plants, Soils and Climate). So I quilted her quilt with loops and leaves and vines. 

This will get its binding this weekend, so it will be another finish to share next week. So many “almosts” this week!

For November, I plan to devote my RSC sewing to my brown scraps. In November 2019 I did two quilts that combined black, gray and browns. Last year during November, I did one brown/blue/gold quilt and two gray quilts. This year my browns are threatening to burst their drawer, so I’m going to knock them back! 

So, up on the design board I have ten 16-patch blocks. They’re just pinned up there, so excuse the wonkiness as some are overlapped for the picture. I had So.Many.Pieces. of the two-tone brown chevron scraps from Quilts for Kids. They were only large enough to cut one or two 2.5” squares from. I was able to get over 300 squares, but only enough to do 41 out of the 42 blocks I’ll need for a quilt. And because they were individual pieces, I can’t strip piece them. But I am being careful to keep the zig-zag oriented in the same direction in every block.

Anyway, because I came up slightly short, I’ll just have to use some other brown for the last block. Or maybe I’ll insert an 8” plain block to give it some interest. I mean, really. How exciting can a brown quilt be? We’ll see. I’m trying to sew two blocks per day, in between other things, which would have me finish the blocks by the 21st or so.  

And then I’ve got all these brown strips that will go toward making another outdoor/camping theme kid quilt. As usual, my process starts by slapping things up on the design board to see if what I have covers enough area to make a kid quilt. This will work. I’ve even got an extra Masala Box block in there. Actual sewing and trimming will start later in the week. I may spice it up with another rusty orange stripe. You know it’s bad when “spice” means rusty orange, LOL!

Sometime during the week I hope to tackle the first of the brown elephants. I want to do several, since I have lots of brown chunks large enough. And I may even rummage through the gray for elephant fabric, too, as the month progresses. Then there are strings and crumbs to deal with, but I can’t even think about those yet...  

Have a great week!